L’assassinat de Thomas More : le tribunal d’une conscience annihilé par un tribunal tyrannique

Abstract

This study hinges around two perspectives: the first one concerns the inner work accomplished by Thomas More through the writing of his prison letters, in which the author’s “conscience” is often solicited and ends up playing the role of a tribunal. The second examines the interrogations conducted by the King’s Tribunal and during More’s trial for high treason. The death sentence inflicted on More still elicits many debates among scholars. We wish to contribute to such a debate by analyzing the cogency of the pre-trial investigation and of the hearings which would lead to capital punishment. Even admitting that the sentence was the result of a legal procedure, there is cause for wondering whether it was also legitimate. Judging from an analysis of the documents based on English jurisprudence, many are the flaws inherent in the trial which lead us to conclude that its legal inconsistency forged a death sentence. Therefore, the word “assassination” is no longer an exaggeration but a rigorous repositioning of the trial as the travesty of a trial. This assassination then becomes the work of a tyrant and his accomplices, forming a tyrannical system which manipulates law regulations to its convenience.